Casino Jack

Both gobsmakingingly awesome in its (true) take on Washington and just way OTT look at the Beltway, CJ is just so good. Honestly, if this had been made as fiction you'd shoot it down as implausible - the stink goes how high? - but here we see lobbyist and senators in cahoots to get the dollar in their pocket at the expense of just about every body else.

Spacey is in fine form, with a sterling support cast, and the film is best viewed as a buckle up and grin fair ride to the underbelly of politics - it really is so way beyond your standard black comedy or satire that it's just jaw dropping.

We enjoyed CJ - it doesn't aim to be a political thriller or have any great message but it is a lot of black comedy and seriously messed-up situations from beginning to end.....

Have fun now.....

Movies like this, Spinning Boris, Barbarians at the Gate, Recount, bla bla bla... A lot of the reviewers on this board are treating this like a real movie and complaining about the style, the pacing, the acting, or whatever. They don't realize that the HBO docudrama is a genre of its own, and they all are directed like this, and have this kind of music and structure and pacing and so on. If you've seen one, you've seen them all. They are fakey, boringly executed accounts of real things that happened, they feel like they take a million years to watch, and they really only appeal to people the first time they see one.

Republican culture is full of sleazy, cynical con artists with big dreams that hinge on manipulating people and ripping them off. This movie is about two such men, Jack Abramoff and Mike Scanlon, and they are worthless people that no one with a soul can empathize with or relate to at all. Watching them make their plans and cheat people and be disloyal to their friends and lovers is boring. there's no entertainment value to it.

In movies like this it is important for the screenwriters to feel that they've painted their main character as an irascible, charismatic character, rascally and witty, full of little zinger lines and whatnot. The real Jack Abramoff seems to be a boring douchebag, and he probably did constantly do impressions of celebrities, but I doubt he was as interesting to watch as Kevin Spacey (who is not interesting enough to save this movie).

I had a difficult time dealing with this movie, partly because the entire system of lobbying is so despicable in itself, and partly because the writer has done his best to show Jack Abramoff as a fundamentally nice guy who just overreached a little and got caught.

I mean, right at the beginning, after we see Kevin Spacey (superb) talking to himself in a mirror, we hear his explanation of why lobbyists exist. Because they're useful. They give legislators information about subjects the legislators need to know something about in order to do their jobs.

That explanation comes straight out of a now unfashionable school of sociological thought called functionalism. If something exists in a society, it's there for a good reason. Otherwise it wouldn't be there, right? Whores make the streets safe for our wives and children. The Mafia fills in the gaps that the police force can't, and it meets a market demand among consumers of illegal goods. Mass murderers and psychopaths provide us with bad examples that we can point out to our kids so they'll know what not to become.

According to the film, Abramoff just did was everyone else was doing. He only had the misfortune of being caught. Nobody argues that perhaps congressional aides or interns ought to be doing the research instead of paid lobbyists. No explanation is offered for why spending on lobbyists more than doubled between 2000 and 2009.

There are no such reality intrusions. Abramoff is a colorful, funny, very active guy. He works out. He loves his family. He knows everyone. He's religious. He opens a kosher restaurant on K Street and plans to open a Hebrew school.

A second reason I found it hard to assess the movie is that I didn't understand it because I'm too dumb. I couldn't follow all the shenanigans. Okay. In one of his minor deals, towards the beginning, the Chippewa tribe, among whom I once lived as a cultural anthropologist, gave him millions of dollars and the money apparently disappeared. Where? I don't know. I told you I was dumb. I don't know what an expression like "he wants ten percent under the table" means. I don't know why a Greek was killed. I don't know why Jon Lovitz got stabbed with a ball point pen. Tom DeLay has a prominent role and I don't know what he did that was supposed to be bad. Abramoff makes some venomous remark about George W. Bush at the end and I don't know why. And I can hardly credit the notion that Mike Scanlon's (Barry Pepper, with a great twisted face) girl friend dropped the dime on all these enterprises because she found a pair of red alien panties in her boy friend's laundry. It's the kind of movie that someone as stupid as I am needs a little preparation for -- a few hours of studying with a book called "Lobbying for Dummies" or something.

Because except for the murder I couldn't identify a single illegal act in the entire movie. Lobbyists give money to politicians and the politicians do favors in return. It sounds a lot like bribery to me, and I know THAT'S illegal, or at least I think it is, but I don't know why, when it takes one form, it's called "lobbying" and is as kosher as Abramoff's restaurant that serves the best roast beef in the city, and why, when it takes another form, it's called "bribery" and you go to jail.

I do, however, recognize a decent performance when I see one, and three performances are stand outs in this production. Kevin Spacey, a little older and chubbier, gets to do some of his impersonations -- Clinton, Al Pacino, and a few others, and he's good. Barry Pepper as Scanlon is terrific as well, as the emotionally unstable squeal cat. And Jon Lovitz is funny, no matter whether the part calls for a comic presentation or not. He's hilarious in some scenes, which I won't spell out.

Not a masterpiece by any means -- "Barbarians At The Gates" is about leveraged buy outs and it's better -- but worth seeing once. I hope you have better luck in decoding the events than I did.

George Hickenlooper's final film - he died a few weeks before the release - focuses on super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his involvement in a corruption scandal that brought down some White House staffers and congress members. "Casino Jack" isn't quite as good as Alex Gibney's documentary "Casino Jack and the United States of Money" but certainly kept my attention every step of the way, just seeing how far Abramoff's reach extended, and how intricate the scandal was.

Kevin Spacey, playing the disgraced lobbyist, shows him to be a slick-talking dude who essentially believes that he's doing the right thing by turning the US government into an ATM for the highest bidder. Meanwhile, he overcharges his Indian clients and helps keep a Mariana Islands sweatshop open. And it extends way beyond that! The look at Abramoff's family life is a little less engrossing. It's clear that his obsession with money has clouded his mind and he's living beyond his means, but it doesn't pack the same punch that the far-reaching scandals do.

So, it's certainly an interesting movie to watch, just to see to what extent Abramoff's deeds turned the government into a bastion of corruption, but it's definitely not as good as it could have been.

Also starring Kelly Preston, Rachelle Lefevre, Barry Pepper, Jon Lovitz, Graham Greene, Maury Chaykin, Christian Campbell and Spencer Garrett.

PS: At the Golden Globes in early 2006, in the wake of Abramoff's conviction, Ben Stiller said "Why would the parents name their son Jack when the last name ends in 'off'?"

2010 seems to be the year that Hollywood universally decided to take its look at one of the great government scandals this past decade, producing both the documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money, and this accompanying (albeit more fictionalized) account of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. After seemingly searching for a juicy role since his duel Oscar winning performances in the mid to late '90s with The Usual Suspects and American Beauty, Kevin Spacey is back in fine form and dominates the screen in this frequently enjoyable, though heavily flawed, rise and fall fable.

Oddly, what makes this movie great also represents its largest shortcomings. The acting is as varied as Abramoff's excuses pertaining to the generous "donations" he receives in the film itself. Barry Pepper as Jack's right-hand man Michael steals scenes at a whim when given the chance and could have easily elevated the film further if given more screen time. Spacey is superb bringing a delicious blend of pompous charm and sleazy anger to the role, and even manages to deliver both a credible Sylvester Stallone and Al Pacino impression amidst the political turmoil his character eventually encounters.

On the other hand, there are some disastrously misguided casting choices, beginning with Kelly Preston as Jack's wife and even though she exhibits some swagger towards the beginning to the film, she is unable to keep up with more skilled thespians as situations escalate towards the finale. The most egregious error is most certainly the inclusion of Jon Lovitz as the owner of a cruise line and casino who undertakes business dealings with Abramoff. Lovitz has proved himself a skilled comedian in supporting roles and did consistently great voice work on The Simpsons. Here, he is an unmitigated disaster, single handily sinking the picture on multiple occasions. He seems oblivious as to when to calm down, his camera mugging and inflections are grinding, and he is apparently unable to quit being Jon Lovitz and simply shut up; this is simply a poor choice by late director George Hickenlooper.

The story at play is a fascinating one, and seeing Jack at his manipulative best even as his world comes crashing down is engrossing. The middle portion however does its bookend acts an injustice, sagging down the segments exploring the infamous lobbyist rise and his inevitable fall. Hickenlooper seems unable to decide how to structure the transition; not how Spacey handles the material pertaining to his character's downfall, but rather the jumble of events by which it is precipitated. Though the event itself makes for inspired reading in venues such as the news or a fact-based doc, perhaps there is not enough substantial material (or maybe too much) to make a fully compelling fictionalized account.

Though ultimately less than the sum of its parts, Casino Jack is timely, passionately constructed and true to its source events. Abramoff is successfully made into the three-dimensional character that those close to him likely knew, and that the media was never able to (or more likely never wanted to) capture. Spacey is without a doubt a large part of this indelibly fiery characterization and strangely (obviously for reasons we will never know) seems more invested in this character than he has in any during the last ten years. Casino Jack's follies are all the more disappointingly glaring considering how strong the hard-hitting portions were, and though better than the average fact-based account, good enough is never good enough when greatness seems to be within reach.